Category: Copyright

The Beijing Treaty was adopted on 26 June 2012 by the Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) but only ratified recently by most signatories. As a result, what does this treaty mean for the film industry and copyright for audiovisual performances and moral rights? Continue reading “Moral Rights under Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances”→

On the 29th November 2017, the CJEU purported to hand down its judgment in the VCAST case.[1] What was meant to be another judgment on article 5(2)(b) of the InfoSoc Directive—the private-copying exemption—[2] turned into another ruling on the making available right under article 3. Rather than addressing the specific questions referred to it from the Tribunale di Torino (District Court, Turin, Italy), the CJEU took the peculiar step of analysing the business “service” of VCAST holistically.[3]Continue reading “Thoughts on VCAST and private copying”→

My last article for this blog focused on the decision of the Designers Guild case and the function of the substantial part test to copyright law in cases which deal with the “altered copying” of an artistic work. My reflections on this case attempted to highlight the need for a de minimis threshold before it is concluded that a substantial part of a work has been infringed. Continue reading “De Minimis and the Meltwater Case”→

The current US circuits split on non-literal copyright in musical composition cases are thoroughly murky; many are not even holdings on what is copyrightable. Although this may seem tedious, it is important to implement expert testimony especially when sometimes our visceral reaction may be “this song is copied” and, in reality, it is not. The courts thus far have only been chipping at the surface of musical copyright protection by only looking at the lyrics and melody but there are other aspects of music including rhythm, tempo and the pattern, which should be protected and it is important that the courts address it in their holdings.Continue reading “Blurred Lines: Circuit Split in Copyright Infringement of Musical Compositions”→